phk malloc, was (Re: ptmalloc2)

Bill Hacker wbh at conducive.org
Tue Feb 22 21:35:41 PST 2005


Dan Melomedman wrote:

Bill Hacker wrote:

If the 'email proxy in question' is that fragile - your statement would 
appear to be true.


It's only fragile because the OS doesn't guarantee preallocated memory.
That's all. Anyway, I've made the decision to only run software like
this on Linux. Linux actually has the system-wide overcommit switch through
'sysctl'. I wish I could switch it on and off per process through an
environment variable instead. Oh well, can't have it all.
I still thing fixing the application is preferable.

Documenting an 'overcommit switch' is all well and good, but theory 
aside, how stable can you expect MessageWall to be *in the real world* 
on a potentially resource-challenged LinBox that is running other things 
as well?

A Linux box shows up here once in a while:

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

 But not this week.....

Bill





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